


Driven By Sadness

by lar_laughs



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Order of the Phoenix - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-01
Updated: 2010-02-01
Packaged: 2017-10-13 12:27:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/137346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lar_laughs/pseuds/lar_laughs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Molly and Harry share a moment of sadness as they consider all they've lost.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Driven By Sadness

Those the Order have lost are memorialized on a plaque Harry commissioned and hung at the entrance to 12 Grimmwauld Place. There was still a great sadness about the friends and family they had lost as time continued to dim the memory of the hurt. The names of the newest losses are shiny from the constant touching they receive as friends and family recount their story with great reverence.

It is the names and stories which few remember that Molly mourns for these days. They were her friends and the first deaths she encountered in the war.

"Do you remember Benjy?" she asks suddenly one day as Arthur sits at the kitchen table, cleaning his growing number of Muggle locks. "He loved my shepherd's pie."

"Everyone loves your shepherd's pie." It is a hasty comment to show that he's being a dutiful husband and listening even though he wants nothing more than to be left alone with his gadgets. The grandchildren will be over soon, eating up his quiet with the never ending parade of questions he patiently answers and touching things with their sticky hands.

"I always made it when I knew he would be coming over. And Caradoc - he always knew how to make us laugh, even in those early, dark days. Such a prankster he and Fab-"

But she can't go on with her reminiscence. When her children were young, she was able to tell them stories of their uncles. Now that those same children have survived the war, all but the one who had been her constant reminder of the Fabien, and should understand her hurt at the great loss of her brothers, she finds she is unable to utter the revered names.

Arthur puts down his cleaning cloth and comes over to offer his shoulder. They are all coming to understand the signs of her internal struggle. _Depression_ , Ginny and Hermione mumble to each other. Ron just envelops his mother in his arms when he sees her grow sad. Hermione tells him he only does it because he can't bear to see the sadness creep over her face but he rejects that idea even though he knows in his heart she's correct. Only Arthur understands. He doesn't try to cheer her up or cure her. They share this sorrow.

"I killed her for them," she mumbled into his shirt front, damp with tears she hasn't realized she cried. "For all of them. She wanted Ginny but I couldn't let her have that kill. There have been too many that have gone unavenged."

He smooths his hand down her back, silent with this own grief. Some things are better left unsaid.

"Mayma! Papa!" Lily runs in to the room, her hair streaming behind her irregardless of the braid it had been securely folded into this morning. "Uncle Viktor has sent me a broom. Just like Mum's broom."

She zooms around the kitchen as if she's already in the air, flying a pattern similar to the one that made her mother famous. Both Molly and Arthur have put on smiles in her presence that don't quite reach their eyes. Lily doesn't notice, or maybe she's grown casual about the sadness she sees on the face of her family members. No matter that she's growing up in a peaceful time, her life is still patterned by the violence of her parent's generation.

"Lily, what did I tell you about running in the house?" Harry stands in the doorway, surveying the scene. He waits for his daughter to cease all movement and walk sedately into the front room where her picture books are stored before he moves forward. She is too like her mother to be quiet for long.

"Harry, we weren't expecting you until this afternoon." Arthur releases Molly, walking forward to shake Harry's hand before following Lily into the front room. She is his favorite grandchild only because she looks so like Ginny did at that age. When he interacts with her, his hip no longer pains him and he's a young father once again, his small daughter looking at him with adoring eyes that remind him he can do anything and everything only because she believes in him.

Harry and Molly stare at each other, their shared pain translating into a silent communion. He doesn't move forward or try to push the sadness from her eyes. Instead, they sit down across the table from each other and simply remember those they lost. It is the only way she knows to expel the demons of her pain and he is the only one who understands.


End file.
